


Inside, Looking Out

by alatarmaia4



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Gen, but it's not the focus of the story, i got so pumped from the last episode i started banging this one out, just because it's lup there's some blupjeans leaking in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11723838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: Okay, so we got the basic rundown from Griffin, but what was Lup really doing and thinking for all those years in the umbrastaff? (very, very spoilery)





	Inside, Looking Out

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a fun little story! I should probably warn you, it's also full of profanity. Like, probably a normal amount for the average Adventure Zone episode with maybe a little more sprinkled in for flavor. Lup is not a happy camper.

    _Fuck Cyrus Rockseeker,_ Lup thought as she collapsed, slowly, onto the floor of the cave. It served her right for not thinking about the thrall, the stupid thrall that had caused so many battles and deaths in the first place. _Stupid._

    At least she’d done what she came to do. The vault was sealed, with Cyrus Rockseeker and the gauntlet inside, and nobody would be able to get in now. It was closed so tightly that not even tiny wisps of smoke were escaping, though some still lingered in the air from when she had slammed the door shut.

    A harsh twinge of pain from her back scattered her thoughts. Wincing, Lup tried to shift into a more comfortable position. As she raised her hand, she saw traceries of black creeping through her veins.

    “Shit,” Lup breathed. Silverpoint poison. One year in, and she’d already burned her body. Barry was going to be disappointed. Hell, _she_ was disappointed. She was barely over two hundred, counting all the years she’d been reset back to a hundred and twenty-ish. She’d hoped to get to four hundred, at least.

    Her only comfort was that the poison worked quickly. Lup leaned back against the cold wall and pulled her hood up; a moment later, she felt extraordinarily light, and stood up, shaking off the pull of her physical body.

    Lup wished she had a tongue to stick out. She settled for flipping off the vault door. “Take that, jerk! I don’t go down that easily.” Now all she had to do was hope nobody was too freaked out when she got back to the Starblaster. Maybe her sorta-death would be good enough to convince them to do something about the Relic Wars, at least.

    Something tugged at the edge of her robe.

    Lup looked down.

    The umbrastaff, held in her body’s arms, was wriggling and twitching. As she watched, transfixed, it turned inside out with such a force that it popped out of her body’s grip, suspending itself unsteadily on the ends of the poles in the fabric.

    “Oh, no,” Lup realized, too late, and turned to flee.

 

    It took ages for Lup to even be able to tell where she was.

    When she looked around herself, she saw black curtains. They didn’t seem to hang from any ceiling that she could see, and they pooled on the floor which she lay on, forming its solid surface. When she worked up the energy to drag herself up and over to the wall, pulling a curtain aside only revealed more curtains.

    She was in the umbrastaff. She knew that much. But it was so much work to try and do anything, much less figure out where the exit was...

    Lup hoped Barry wasn’t missing her too much...

 

    Lup spent a long time (or what seemed like a long time - there were no clocks in the umbrastaff) floating in a strange sleepless state, probably a result of being absorbed by her own creation. When she thought, her thoughts seemed to come from a long way away and always felt slightly fuzzy. But Lup fought for clarity, and eventually she got it - or at least some semblance of it.

    She could sense where she was. Later, she could hear the quiet noises of the cave she was still inside (and boy, did she _really_ have to struggle to hear those). Eventually, after who knew how long, she could see outside of her prison.

    “Oh, boy,” was all she could say. _“Geez.”_ Her body had _not_ aged well in death. Decomposition didn’t usually go that fast, did it? And all her clothing besides the robe was _gone_ . A little shaken, Lup let her vision fade back to the black-curtained room. Even in lich form, she wasn’t as skeletal as that - and a real body was far, far different from a magical, undead creature. Especially her _own_ body.

    Lup wished, though not very hard, that someone would find her on accident and then delivered the umbrastaff back to the Starblaster. She didn’t want any of her friends to have to see what had happened to her.

    ...Lup hoped they would find her soon. She was getting bored, and it was beginning to really affect her ability to pull together enough energy to pay attention to anything that wasn’t the umbrastaff.

 

    There was something loud in the distance, louder than the usual cave sounds. Lup, straining herself, could only make out faint yelling and the sounds of grinding machinery. Was the mine active again? There had been a bunch of crazy-big robots when she’d come through here originally; maybe they were being used.

    Lup retreated as thoroughly as she could into the umbrastaff, trying to exert her influence over her body as well and keep it hidden. She didn’t want a random dwarf stumbling across her and trying to loot her dessicated corpse. She just wanted her _friends._ Any of them, or hell, all of them at once. At this point she would have been satisfied with Davenport turning up for a dramatic rescue and getting her out of this stupid cave.

    Lup sulked, and tried to keep herself hidden, and listened hard.

    The sounds of whatever operation was going on slowly faded. She began to assume that some adventurers had come through and then retreated, when the sound of footsteps caught her ear.

    There were several pairs, at least four people. One passed right by her, heading towards where the vault door was (oh fuck no); one paused, causing the other two to stop a moment later.

    One pair of footsteps approached. Lup scowled and tried to radiate ‘no dwarves welcome’.

    “Hey, there’s a guy over here with a cane!” Lup froze when she heard Taako speak. She lost her control for a moment, and saw only the black-curtained room, heard nothing. _Taako had found her._

...But he hadn’t realized it was her. Why had he called the umbrastaff a cane? Maybe it was hidden by her body, but he should have recognized it. Had something happened to him?

    Struck by sudden worry, Lup bent her whole will towards listening and seeing. She almost lost control again when she saw Taako’s face for the first time in, god, it must have been years. He looked _older._ Just a little bit, but markedly so for an elf. He still had his hat, but he wasn’t wearing his robe _or_ his jacket. All his clothes looked fancy, if cheap, but that was normal; the way they were travel-stained and worn was definitely not.

    And there was Merle, right next to him! He hadn’t come alone! Merle looked different, too, and he wasn’t wearing his jacket either. He was squinting down at her - at the staff, more likely.

    Lup felt a spell wash over the staff as Merle muttered under his breath. She was filled, abruptly, with a strange anger.

    “What are you casting spells for?” She hollered. “It’s me! It’s my fucking magic umbrella! You’ve seen me use it! _Taako!”_

“So what did you - what kind of vibe did you get from it?” Taako asked Merle curiously, as if he hadn’t heard her at all. Lup backed away from the view, and it vanished. She stared at the stupid black curtains in horror.

    Something was wrong. They didn’t know it was hers. Had something happened with the voidfish? Some slip of the hand, and the wrong thing went into Fisher’s tank?

    With a surge, Lup reached out again. “Taako!”

    “-wrap it in the robe and bring it along,” Taako was saying. He didn’t react the second time, either. Lup hadn’t managed to so much as shake the umbrastaff. Merle reached for her, gathering up a handful of cloth and taking hold of the handle.

    “Oh, no!” Lup shouted. “No way! This day is bad enough without being used by _you!_ ” For the first time since being trapped, she poured all of her energy into magic.

    Merle’s hand was yanked away from the handle. Lup heard a distant thump and Taako’s exclamation, and instantly regretted her temper. She hadn’t meant to _hurt_ Merle.

    “Let me give it a whirl,” Taako said, sounding gleeful, and Lup’s heart swelled. She was lucky her brother was a dumbass. After seeing what she’d done to Merle, he still wanted to give it a go. Maybe some repressed memory in the back of his head was telling him the same thing she was trying to get across.

    As Taako’s hand touched the handle, Lup screamed as loud as she could, _“Taako, it’s me!”_

She could _feel_ that something had happened. Red electricity flickered across her vision, and Taako’s eyes widened. The umbrastaff moved, for the first time in years. Lup felt the faintest possible pull from her body, recognizing that she belonged to it, and with one last desperate burst she moved her skull’s head up to make eye contact with Taako.

    Then he pulled the umbrella away, and Lup felt the pull vanish. Exhausted, she let her senses fade away, falling back into the strange blank state.

    At least she was with her brother again.

 

    Lup forced herself back to what she considered consciousness quicker than she usually bothered with. She had her _brother_ again, why wouldn’t she? And she still had to figure out why he’d forgotten her.

    Also the umbrastaff was moving around enough that it was almost jostling her, which meant that some kind of bullshit was going on.

    Taako groaned from somewhere unseen as Lup peered out. He’d put her in his backpack, the jerk, and she couldn’t see anything that was happening. A buzzer sounded from somewhere, and Taako made a choked noise. If Lup had a proper heart, it would have been racing as she struggled to find an angle she could see him from. There was a shattering of glass, and heavy footfalls,and then a heavy thud like someone getting knocked down hard.

    Nearly frantic, Lup threw herself into getting Taako’s attention. She could hear the umbrastaff rattle against everything else in the pack (there was a shit ton of gold, good for Taako).

    A hand reached in and fumbled around, and Taako drew the umbrastaff out of the bag.

    “Hell yeah!” Lup said, as Taako cast magic missile. “Get ‘im!” The umbrastaff, entirely without her input, opened itself.

    As the ogre collapsed, an intercom sounded from somewhere Lup couldn’t see.

    “That was quite an unconventional way of doing that,” said Lucretia’s voice, slightly staticky, giving Lup the second heart attack of the day. _Lucretia_ was here! Surely out of everybody she’d be able to figure out that they’d forgotten about Lup. She’d find some bit in her journals that was all staticky and weird, and soon they’d notice all the signs of a seventh person having been on the Starblaster. Hell, _Barry_ would say something about it if nobody else would.

    They’d figure it out and bust her out, and probably be sad about her being a lich, but it would be okay.

 

    The more Lup listened, the more confused she got.

    Lucretia talked all formal to Magnus and Merle and Taako, now. It was weird. There was all sorts of talk about bracers and reclaimers and something about her ‘organization’. Did Lucretia run some kind of business? Davenport was there, but Lucretia was bossing him around, and he barely spoke. The only thing Lup recognized about Lucretia’s interactions with the others was Magnus pleading with her to have a dog (on the moon??).

    Lup was getting a terrible sinking feeling that the ‘forgetting’ problem may have gone deeper than she dared to fear.

    Where was Barry, in all of the weirdness? Everyone but him had appeared so far. Where had he gone? Why had he left the other five?

    Did _he_ remember her?

    “Is there like another,” Taako was saying, “like, is there a _bad_ Bureau of Balance? A bad guy?”

    “The Bureau of Imbalance?” Magnus provided.

    “As far as we know,” Lucretia said, and there was something wrong about the hesitant way she spoke, she’d grown out of that around the six of them decades ago, “the - the rogue wizards, who called themselves Red Robes, they - these rogue wizards who created all these weapons of mass destruction, are - they’re all gone. They all - most of them were killed in the mad scramble for these objects. But as far as we know, we - we haven’t seen any Red Robes. If you see any on your journey, if you encounter any-”

    “If we see someone in a Red Robe, kill ‘em, got it,” Magnus said promptly. Lup felt sick.

    “No, don’t,” Lucretia said, just as quickly. She kept talking, but Lup wasn’t listening anymore.

    Lucretia still knew about the Red Robes, but Magnus didn’t seem to, and neither did the other two. Who knew what was going on in Davenport’s mind, but he hadn’t said a single thing to object to this new, ominous characterization of their crew.

    What had Lucretia _done?_

 

    Life, or undeath rather, inside the umbrastaff only managed to avoid being boring by a coincidence of mechanics. Lup couldn’t do or really feel anything unless she tried to, and if she didn’t try, time passed without her even noticing. _Everything_ passed without her noticing. In the undetermined amount of time after she realized that Lucretia had made them all forget, Lup didn’t feel much like trying.

    Sinking into the numb stillness of her black prison only felt good at first. It let her pretend she still hadn’t been found, sometimes. Lup still couldn’t keep track of time, but after maybe a week, she started getting angry instead.

    How dare Lucretia do something like that? How _could_ she? She and Lup were friends, closer than anything, and she _erased Lup from memory?_ From her _brother’s_ memory? Lup stalked furiously back and forth across the black-curtained room, flames curling up from the edge of her robe and completely failing to light anything on fire. She couldn’t do anything to the stupid fucking room, couldn’t destroy anything or take any of the curtains down or _get out._

It eventually occurred to Lup (in one of her calmer moods) that Lucretia wasn’t the type to have done what she did for shits and giggles. She would’ve had a really good reason, or at least one that she thought was really good.

    It all came back to the Light of Creation in the end, didn’t it? That and the Hunger. Oh, Lucretia. Lup wished desperately that she could just _talk_ to someone. Lucretia wasn’t an unreasonable woman, even if Lup was pissed at her. Lup could talk her out of whatever she had planned, no problem. If she could just get out, she’d give _anything._

If Taako could just know she was there...

 

    Lup started trying to pay attention to her friends more, but it was hard. In the cave, there had never been anything to keep her attention. Now it felt like she had to listen in on _everything._ It always ended with her inadvertently losing her grasp on her concentration and sinking into the numbness, and when she managed to look out past the black-curtained room again weeks would have passed.

    So it was that she only got flashes of things; a shitty dorm-ish room that reminded her of the Institute student housing with some random halfling in it, a glimpse of a cafeteria and Taako criticizing the food, a strange glass ball inside a pitch-black tube of sorts.

    After _that_ particular instance Lup began to save her energy instead, so she could check back in at a more opportune time. Who the hell knew what they were doing now; whatever it was, they were definitely going to need her. Hell, if they didn’t remember being part of the Starblaster crew or even her, they’d probably lost all sorts of rad skills. It would be a miracle if they got through it without anybody having a near-death experience.

 

    In hindsight, she maybe shouldn’t have jinxed it.

    Hearing someone yell for them to run was more than enough to catch Lup’s attention. She just barely caught the end of Taako shouting “See you all in hell!” as she took in the scene; a dead body, blood everywhere, and a weird as hell fire crab on the ceiling.

    What the fuck.

    The fight jostled her around a lot. The speed of movement that the umbrastaff was being thrown around at was disorienting - she must’ve been in that cave a _looooong_ time to get so used to stillness. Lup raged when Taako was hurt, but at least as the umbrastaff she could do something (on a technicality) to help. She’d used up too much energy keeping an eye on him to do anything more.

    There was a lot of talking after the crab got cut into two. Just, a lot of talking. Lup gave up two minutes in after realizing she was missing every single piece of context a person would conceivably need to understand what the fuck was happening in her friends’ conversation, and focused on pulling together as much of her energy as she could in case she needed to fight someone else.

    There was a moment, when Taako tried to bluff the conductor, where Lup laughed just because god, he hadn’t changed at _all._ A hundred years gone, and he was still Taako.

    ...When was the last time she’d just laughed at something that was funny? Before the Relic Wars? Leave it to Taako to break her streak. She was so going to get him back for that.

    After they fought and killed whatever was causing trouble.

 

    “You’re a weiner, Jenkins!” Lup could hear Magnus shouting gleefully from inside the train car.

    “I hate you all-” Jenkins was audibly seething, and Lup was _loving_ it.

    “More like Wankins.”

    “More like dickface!” Lup hollered, pretending for a moment that they could hear her. “Wait, crap, that’s not with the theme. Whatever.” She was dying to get a go at one of those monsters, and could tell that she was heating up the umbrastaff from the force of her all-consuming desire to light them the fuck up.

    Of course fucking _Jenkins_ got there before she did.

    When Jenkins was gone and Taako was rifling through the valuables scattered across the floor, Lup saw it before he or Merle did, much less figured out that it was what they were looking for. Davenport’s monocle was lying forgotten next to a few odd knives and forks, gleaming in the dim light.

    Lup really hoped nobody would end up thralled. Come to think of it, what had they done with her gauntlet? She’d been really out of it from trying so hard to get Taako’s attention in the cave. Was it even still there?

    Lup breathed a sigh of relief when Taako used the umbrastaff to pick it up. She could hear, faintly, a weird voice pleading with Taako to just _put it on, c’mon buddy,_ but it didn’t do anything to her. Lup guessed it was difficult for a lich umbrella to be taken in by a thrall. She didn’t even have a face to put the monocle on, technically.

    Once it was gone, however, Lup felt the umbrastaff lurch in a different direction. Taako made a faint noise of surprise. Seeing where the umbrastaff was pointed, Lup grimaced and stopped watching.

    It was peculiar, to experience her invention work from within it. She could tell when it opened and folded inside out, and when Jenkins’ wand was broken apart and absorbed into it. A shiver like a breeze went through the room. It rustled the curtains and made the gold embroidery on them gleam with a sudden and very brief reflection of light.

    “Huh,” Lup said, feeling as though a thick fog had been cleared from her mind. “I gotta do that more often.”

    She saw _everything_ that happened afterward. That was about ten whole minutes of action without faltering, which she was pretty sure was a record. Though the train not being able to stop was nerve-wracking enough that her attention was sharp enough to cut the engine room in half even without the boost.

    “You’re just gonna _jump off?_ ” Lup yelled as Taako stumbled through his plan. “You can’t just jump off a moving train! _You can’t push a child off the train!”_ She added as Angus went flying. Luckily Lup was still in Taako’s hand, so she could see Angus sit up on the swiftly receding grassland next to the tracks. “Ugh! You’re such a mess without me!”

    At least the garden destruction portal was cool as hell.

 

    Lup was actually paying attention and enjoying the Midsummer festival (vicariously), when the Hunger had to go and ruin it.

    The first thing she thought, after the shriek that split eardrums she technically didn’t have anymore, was _no, we were supposed to have stopped it._

Something was wrong, _again._ It shouldn’t have been able to find this world. It had to have been more than a year already since they’d arrived! Were the relics just a temporary measure?

    And now she had a deadline. If she couldn’t find a way to make Taako remember her before the year was up, they’d all die as they were. Forgotten, or forgetting.

    That _could not_ happen.

   

    Lup was startled out of her slightly unwilling rest by the sounds of a fight.

    It took her a few heart-stopping moments to realize that it was only a training fight, not any actual danger.

    “You’re killing me, Taako,” she sighed, sitting on the floor. “My lich form is gonna get burned and it’s gonna be because I spend so much time worrying about your ass. You dingus.” Still, even without her, Taako was capable of a hell of a lot of things. And he got better on every adventure they went on, which was a plus. She just wished she was there with him.

    Lup stopped regretting being ‘woken’ as soon as she heard Lucretia’s voice. She hadn’t heard her at all, not since the incident where she realized Lucretia had made the rest of them forget.

    “What do you need them for?” Lup asked sourly, as outside Lucretia detailed the minutiae of their urgent mission to Goldcliff. “What do you want the relics for so badly, Lucretia? Was it worth all of this? Do you even _know_ I’m dead? Do you fucking _care?”_

“She has been impossible to apprehend, thanks to the power of the Gaia Sash,” Lucretia was saying, ignorant as to Lup’s presence.

    “Couldn’t you have just _talked to us?”_ Lup groaned. “None of us are unreasonable people! You’re not! Why go to extremes?”

    “Sounds pretty easy. It sounds better than the train,” Taako said, twirling the umbrastaff absentmindedly.

    “Don’t jinx it, Taako, you’re doing the same shit I did on that train.” Lup sighs. “Damn, I’m gonna need to save my awake time up again, huh?” Sometimes she really despised being trapped in her stupid magical umbrella. If she was just a normal, non-trapped lich, there would be none of this bargaining and struggle to tell what was going on outside of it (though she had been getting better at that). “Don’t do anything stupid when I’m not paying attention.”

 

    Judging by the way the umbrastaff rattled and fell and her first view was of an unconscious Taako, he’d done something _really_ stupid.

    There was some nonsense going on with Magnus attacking some dipshit in an elaborate raven mask, but she couldn’t be bothered with that. She wanted to know if Taako was okay. Why wasn’t anybody healing him? Shit, Merle was out, too.

    Lup liked the halfling lady, though. Stylish, _and_ she dispensed some quick healing to Taako. What a way to make it into Lup’s heart (which she didn’t have, and was also mostly reserved for Barry).

    Lup liked Hurley even _more_ when the halfling revealed her sweet ride. Being trapped in an umbrella had never been more bitter than when it was preventing her from getting in on an illegal racing setup. Once it became clear that Taako and company were absolutely going to race with Hurley, she stopped listening in; she didn’t want to miss a single bit of the race.

    This was going to be so. Epic. Once she got out she was going to make Taako come back here with her so that they could race as a team. They could put together a dope car, no problem. Maybe with flames painted on the sides. Hell yeah.

 

    The race was just as fantastic as she’d hoped.

    Battlewagons fighting? Cool animal masks (and Taako _almost_ remembering the mongooses)? Fucking _Garyl?_ What _wasn’t_ there to enjoy was the real question. Lup yelled and shouted her approval at every mad maneuver or crazy as hell spell that got flung off at their opponents.  

    It got less enjoyable when Taako got mind-controlled into jumping off the wagon. Lup threw herself at the walls, clawing at the curtains in an attempt to do _something_. Hurley was yelling too, there was a lot of yelling and noise going on, and so Lup almost missed the fact that the jostling was Taako being snatched out of midair and not him hitting the ground and dying.

    “Are you doing okay?” The _fucking bugbear, what the fuck_ was saying. Lup just stared out at him as he kept talking. The entire situation felt as though it was spiralling out of her grasp. Since when did Taako know a bugbear?

    “Yeah, my dude! I’m good now, thank you!” Taako sounded a little wild. Lup could tell he was just as bewildered as she was, which made zero sense, but at least they were on the same side.

    At least he was safe. Lup nodded definitively to herself. She could deal with a weird, maybe-ensorceled bugbear if he was there to look after Taako.

 

    “You can’t just drive off a cliff!” Lup shouted as Taako climbed back into the gunner’s nest. “I don’t _care_ if the relic’s in there! Go home and tell Lucretia you couldn’t do it!” She screamed wordlessly in frustration as Hurley gunned the engine. _“Idiot!”_

    If there had been a screen inside the umbrastaff, or a window, Lup would have been glued to it as the trio plus Hurley made their way through the furious storm to where Sloane was trapped in the vine platform. Lup felt bad for Sloane, sure, but not at the possible cost of Taako’s life! Or Merle’s or Magnus’s!

    She must have gotten across _something,_ at least, because Taako burned his last spell on a Fireball.

    She had to be able to do something else, something better, something that wasn’t just letting Taako use the umbrastaff! Magnus was trapped in vines and yelling like he was being hurt, and Taako didn’t have jack shit left to cast. She was a lich, damnit, she was supposed to be awesome and powerful!

    The umbrastaff jerked around so quickly it nearly swept Lup off her feet. Cursing, she looked out - surely they hadn’t defeated Sloane that fast? Sloane didn’t even have a wand for the umbrastaff to take!

    Tiny, shimmering flecks of an arcane core floated before her.

    Lup didn’t even get all the way through “Fuck yeah,” before the umbrastaff was opening and inverting, greedily absorbing every speck. The gold embroidery on the curtains glimmered and flashed (was there more of it than there had been?), the curtains themselves rustled and swayed, and the color of the room seemed to be richer than it had been before.

    Lup had never felt more alive. Flames flickered on the edges of her robe and on her hands, casting wavering shadows in every direction. Her view into the world outside the umbrastaff was crystal-clear, and she was barely trying. Arcane energy coursed through her.

    “I’m going to _wreck this girl’s shit,”_ Lup said, and threw her arms out as Taako cast Fireball.

    The room - or maybe the whole umbrastaff - shook from the sheer force of the power being channeled. There was a moment of nothing - and then another moment - and then Lup’s view exploded into light.

    Lup wavered a little, immediately after casting it, and so did her view outside. The flames extinguished, and the extra gold embroidery was gone, if it had ever been there in the first place.

    She still felt better than she ever had in the course of her imprisonment. She had poured everything she’d gotten from the arcane shards into that spell, but the umbrastaff had obviously been loath to give up all of it. She could still hear what was going on - and what was going on was a lot of ominous laughter.

    “Be careful!” Hurley was yelling. “That’s silverpoint! It’s a type of plant, its venom is cursed! If you get touched by that, there’s no surviving that!”

    Fucking _silverpoint._

    “Taako, don’t you dare get killed by that! Nuh-uh! Death is the one thing I refuse to have us do the same way!” Taako didn’t hear her, of course. He was too busy getting hugged by Hurley. “Is now the time!”

    Hurley retreated. She wasn’t wearing her safety harness. Taako was. “Oh. Good move, lady.”

    The three (technically four of them) were blasted out into the tornado.

 

    It would’ve been a lot nicer if they could have gotten Hurley and Sloane out of the whole mess alive. Hurley, at least, didn’t die from the poisoning; that was a better hand than Lup was ever dealt. To be fair, though, Hurley wasn’t a lich. Probably. She _was_ a very nice tree.

    “Taako, if you carve your name on that tree, I’m gonna punch you as soon as I get out,” Lup informed him. Taako splashed through the water towards the tree, but he seemed to be going for the sash and not the tree itself.

    He was picking up the sash.

    ...He was _moving to put it on._

“Fuck! You idiot, no!” Lup threw herself at the walls again, pulling curtains aside but never getting anywhere. _“Shit!”_ She didn’t want to be used by someone under a thrall, but she didn’t want to hurt him like she’d done with Merle, either!

    Luckily Magnus had no such compunctions and punched Taako before Lup could get any further with her dilemma.

    “Stupid!” Lup yelled as Taako groaned, rubbing the side of his head. “You’re gonna let _Merle’s_ relic get to you like that? This was never a problem before!”

    Though apparently, it was _everyone’s_ day to get pulled into the thrall, because fucking Bane tried to poison them with more fucking silverpoint.

    That particular incident got a little overshadowed when a _lich_ in a _red robe_ appeared.

    “Magnus, stop!” Lup yelled on reflex, as Magnus’s fist went right through Barry. “And stop making me fucking yell at you guys all the time!”

    “Are you afraid?” Barry hissed, in his weird spooky voice.

    “Babe, what the fuck,” Lup said. She watched, part sick with misery and part overjoyed to see Barry again, as he talked to their three friends who had no idea who he was - or who _she_ was.

    But Barry knew. He was dead (somehow?), he could remember. But he _didn’t notice her,_ no matter how loud she was. The umbrastaff didn’t so much as shift a centimeter.

    “Oh, you sap,” Lup said helplessly as Barry vanished in a gout of flame. “That’s my move.” Did Barry even know what had happened to her? Taako and the rest knew where her body was, or had been, even if they didn’t know it was her. Shit, _had been._ If Barry had been to the cave later, any sign of her presence there was just a pile of ash. He’d have no clue. And he was being all spooky and lich-like for no reason that she could understand, which worried her.

    God, she wanted to talk to him again so badly.

 

    Lup’s senses were still crystal-clear, which meant she got to hear Lucretia talking _all about_ how dangerous the Red Robes were and how they should be avoided at all costs. How the Bureau of Balance was _so_ threatened by these people, how they could not under any circumstances know what they were doing.

    “What _are_ you doing?” Lup demanded in frustration. “Collecting relics? Faking that you’re destroying them? You can’t destroy the light of creation, Lucretia!”

    A thought occurred.

    “Oh,” Lup said, to herself. The Hunger appearing when the Light should have been in too many pieces for it to be found. Faking the destruction of the relics. “You’re collecting relics.”

    Lucretia still wanted to do _her_ plan.

 

    The effects of the arcane shards wore off very slowly, which meant Lup didn’t need to pay very much attention to the world outside the umbrastaff to hear what was going on. Even when she began to have to try harder, she didn’t put much effort into it.

    There was a crisis on Candlenights? Whatever. Taako could handle it, he was a big boy now who knew all the spells they’d learned a hundred years ago at the Institute. There was a crystal monster, big whoop. She could hear them handling it. What would she be able to do, anyway?

    ...Okay, so she still worried about Taako, but the worry seemed as far away as all her thoughts had been when she’d first been trapped. The world outside happened to her without affecting her. And besides, it would take more than a stupid huge trash monster thing to get the better of her brother.

    Lucas’s dumb explanation of the planar system was maybe the most ironic thing Lup had ever witnessed. She was pretty damn sure _Lucas_ hadn’t been anywhere other than the prime material plane ever in his entire life. His head would probably explode if he ever saw the Starblaster. Lup wanted to take him out in it just to see it happen.

    “And here’s the local galaxy group-”

    “Seen it,” Magnus said promptly. After all the freaking out he’d done, he was clearly bluffing. Lup wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.

    “Oh. Uh. Okay.”

    Lucas kept chattering on about things they’d literally learned hundreds of years ago, and Lup wondered how much Lucretia had erased. Had giving Fisher knowledge of the fact that they’d been a part of the Institute at all been enough to erase everything they’d learned there? Did she have journals detailing her knowledge of their lives before their trip began? That would be a little weird, but it was Lucretia she was talking about.

    “-and Merle, you asked a very important question earlier that I would also like to circle back to!”

    “Ah, yes.” Merle looked blank. “What was it?”

    Lucas sighed. “You’ve already forgotten. Of course, that qu-”

    Lup sensed the extra presence in the room before anyone so much as turned around.

    “Barry!” Lup blurted out, spirits rising, as Magnus swung hard with his axe. It passed right through Barry. “Would you cut that shit out, Magnus?” Magnus attacked again. _“Seriously?”_

    She could tell Magnus didn’t mean it out of anger, not really. That point was driven home with the red robe joke that made Taako and Merle snort and the heart she didn’t have twist painfully.

    “Uh...sup?” Barry said, still in the terrible fake spooky voice, and her heart untwisted immediately. What a dork.

    And a dramatic dork, still. _He_ was putting his lich powers to every possible use. Even without his memories, the illusion of the screaming Hunger spooked Taako, Lup could tell. And then-

    “You three are the on-” Barry stopped dead mid-word. “Taako? Taako, where did you find that umbrella?”

    “Yes!” Lup shouted, pumping her fist. “Yes, it’s me! Barry, c’mon, just grab me and run or something!” She could live with being away from Taako if it meant Barry could figure out a way to get her out.

    “Yeah, I took it off this, uh, there was this dead thug with a red robe,” Taako said.

    “You f- you, you-”

    “Yes! Yes, it’s me, you found me! Get me out of here!” Lup kicked at the walls. The umbrastaff didn’t move. She wished she hadn’t burned that whole arcane core on a fucking Fireball spell. _“Barry!”_ She didn’t want to sit here and listen to her friends call her ‘he’ while Barry just _stood there_ and hyperventilated!

    Barry was shuddering, red electricity flickering around his form.

    “Oh, no, babe, don’t,” Lup pleaded. “Don’t go evil lich on me! Remember the great day we had together? Yeah, me too! Listen to me!” If there was a single god anywhere in the world who could possibly make her voice audible, she hoped _they_ were listening, at least.

    Fuck, no, they weren’t. Holy symbols alone would burn if she touched them; what god was listening for a lich’s prayer?

    “Wha - what? Where did - what did you- _YOU FOUND HER?”_

    Lup cursed as Barry was swallowed up in another magical gout of flames. “I appreciate the thought, but I’d rather have _gone with you!”_

    She couldn’t help but think warmly of him anyway. He was looking for her. _Someone_ knew about the memory problem. Someone who could actually do shit was trying to do shit about it.

    She wasn’t completely forsaken.

 

    Lup did _not_ like the crystal golems, she decided as she scooted the umbrastaff back over to Taako. He was lying paralyzed on the ground in his suit, and the crystal golem was standing menacingly. It was all the sharp edges that really got the menace across, really.

    “Hey, thug,” Taako said from the ground, “what’s your name? I’m about to tentacle your dick.”

    ...Oh, this was going to be priceless.

    The tentacles attacking the golem were absolutely as hilarious as Lup expected. The crystal shards knocking Taako unconscious, less so. She fumed as the battle continued around them, helpless without someone to wield her.

...No, not her. The umbrastaff, not her. Geez, the lines were really getting blurred the longer she was trapped in it.

 

    Lup didn’t recognize Magic Brian, especially not his robot body, but she went on high alert as soon as the words ‘Phoenix Fire Gauntlet’ were uttered.

    Man, it was lucky the dude was dead, because she was seventy percent sure that dead people couldn’t use the relics. But he was a pretty strange ghost, and she wanted to know what had happened to her gauntlet.

    Lucretia already took the Light out of it, probably. Maybe it had just turned to dust. Lup hoped not. It was a pretty rad gauntlet, and if it wasn’t deadly and enthralling anymore she wanted it back. It could be a great accessory in the right context.

    Wait, shit, they were fighting. Right.

 

    As soon as the words ‘bounty hunter for the Raven Queen’ crossed Kravitz’s lips, Lup pulled herself as far back into the umbrastaff as she could possibly go. She was _not_ here to get her second chance whisked out from under her feet, no siree. Kravitz could go fuck himself. Taako would probably be fine.

    Of course, she also missed the entirety of the battle that followed, but whatever.

    That became _incredibly_ disappointing later, when she poked her metaphorical head back out only to stumble into a discussion about how to get the Philosopher’s Stone out of Magnus, who _fucking ate it._ It was a good thing Taako never cared much about his relic, because that was disgusting and also the most Magnus thing she’d ever heard.

    Lucretia’s discussion about Barry’s appearance...that, Lup didn’t listen in on. She didn’t want to hear any more crap about them coming out of Lucretia’s mouth. But later, when all three of the guys were eating dinner, Taako retrieved a strange fuse thing from his bag which spoke in a robotic voice, and delivered an ominous prophecy.

    _The Twins_

_The Lover_

_The Protector_

_The Lonely Journal Keeper_

_The Peacemaker_

_And The Wordless One_

    It repeated that, over and over. Lup found herself incapable of pulling away and letting the silence of the black-curtained room muffle it.

    The twins. The _twins._ And Taako didn’t react at all.

 

    “You can’t just keep tormenting children, you know,” Lup said as Taako laughed off his most recent weird threat to Angus. Angus himself was looking a little rattled but attempting a smile. “You know what else you can’t do? Keep fucking ignoring me. This shit is getting real tiresome.”

    Taako didn’t answer. He and Angus were talking about macaroons. Apparently that was more important than acknowledging his sister who he couldn’t hear.

    “Wish I could have a macaroon,” Lup muttered. “Actually, you know what? I wish I could have literally anything to eat! But I’m in a stupid umbrella!” She wished she’d never invented it in the first place. A magical umbrella was _not_ worth all the fuckery she’d gone through in the years she’d been trapped inside it.

    “There you go.” Taako was pointing her at the box of treats. “I’ll just make these sort of...taste better.”

    “Oh, no!” Lup growled. “I don’t get any, neither do you!”

    She summoned every ounce of Lup-ness she could and blasted the box to hell. Taako made a faint, pained noise, but Lup didn’t hear it. The flames had started flaring up on her hem again.

    “That’s not what I cast,” Taako said, staring down at her.

    “Because _I_ cast it!” Lup screamed, and swerved hard towards the wall, throwing out another Scorching Ray. _L. U. P._ Lucretia couldn’t have gone so far as to erase her _name._ She couldn’t have.

    “What does that,” Taako said, sounding bewildered. “What is L U P?”

    ...What was the fucking point.

 

    For a long time, Lup didn’t pay any attention at all. She did, in fact, do her _absolute best_ to avoid knowing what Taako was using her for. She told herself firmly that she didn’t want to know.

    It was a little difficult to ignore outside happenings when said happenings felt like the world on fire.

    Lup didn’t have the time to even try to look. She could feel herself falling, could feel fire licking at the sides of the umbrastaff and a crushing pressure that destroyed the black-curtained room and _freed_ her-

    And then she was back inside the black-curtained room. And there was no exit.

    “What the _hell?”_ Lup said blankly.

 

    So Taako and the others were in some strange desert town with a Sheriff named Isaak and an armored guardian named Roswell; that was about all Lup could glean. She didn’t know why they were there, or what the fuck had freed her for 0.3 seconds before tossing her right back into a magically unbroken umbrastaff. It was mostly pure furious force of will that allowed Lup to keep such an attentive eye on the new proceedings.

    Taako didn’t seem to know much of what was going on, either; Magnus and Merle displayed no sign of having any kind of clue. They seemed content to wander around the town and talk to people. A random dark elf geeked out over some cooking show that Taako had apparently done, which Lup was a little disappointed to have missed. Then there was the witch Paloma, who only taunted Lup further with her baked goods floating around everywhere.

    And then they were running, and the bank was burning, and the ground was collapsing out from underneath them.

    The umbrastaff was crushed, and Lup’s prison was gone.

    _And then it came back._

    Lup screamed in frustration. What was going _on?_ She’d been freed twice now! She should have stayed that way! Things shouldn’t have kept being reset-

    Ohhh, that fucking time cup.

 

    The umbrastaff splintered and burned, and Lup’s prison was gone.

    She floated in place for a moment or two, frozen with shock. The room she was in was completely wrecked, a row of lockers charred and busted wide open.

    Taako, Merle, and Magnus were lying on the floor.

    They were lying on the floor and they were-

    They were-

 

    So, Lup didn’t remember that particular loop super well, but she was pretty sure she might’ve kicked the shit out of Roswell when they arrived to investigate the explosion. There was a lot of - it got very blurry in places, and she _may_ have lost control a teensy bit. Just a little.

    It was embarrassing, and she wasn’t going to talk about it. Still, when the hour reset and she was back in Taako’s grasp, there was a fair amount of relief mixed in with the fury.

    Lup struggled to pay attention the next time they were at the lockers, but boy did she try. She was _not_ going to just sit there and let them kill themselves even if things did get -

    “Magnus, _no!”_

    The locker opened without exploding. Magnus looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.

    “Oh, you figured it out,” Lup said, relieved. “That’s-”

    The next locker exploded.

    Lup shuddered, hovering over the wreckage. She could feel red electricity flickering around herself - fuck, what if she hit Taako’s - what if she hit Taako with that? C’mon, the good day, there was a good day! She had a good day and it was awesome and she was _not going to prove anyone right about liches._

Barry had given her a good day. Barry was still around. He remembered her. At the end of the hour when time reset, Taako would be alive. All of them would be alive. When she got out of the umbrella she’d get Taako to remember and they would have another good day together.

    For one frightening second, Lup couldn’t remember what Taako had done for her day that was so great.

    There was - he had made her something. He made breakfast. He cooked for her. They would have to skip that part in the Great Day 2.0, since she couldn’t eat anymore.

    She really, really wanted something nice to eat.

 

    Paloma, entirely reasonably, didn’t react well to having a lich walk through her front door.

    “‘Sup,” Lup said, hovering just inside the doorway. It was a lot easier to see the details of the house from this perspective. She could see what kinds of food were floating in various covered dishes, and the crystals dangling from the ceiling sparkled in the light. “I’m not here to fight.”

    Paloma squinted suspiciously at her. “You are very dead.”

    “Yeah, I know.”

    “What do you want here?”

    “I heard you bake cool shit.”

    Paloma squinted harder. “Dead things don’t eat.”

    “Yeah,” Lup sighed, “but it smells nice in here.”

    Paloma’s squint eased slightly, and she put her wand back in the pocket of her frilly apron. Lup appreciated that Paloma hadn’t taken even the smallest potshot at her.

    “You know who I am, of course,” Paloma said. “This I know. But I do not know you, which is funny, because normally I know people.”

    Lup scowled, though Paloma wouldn’t have been able to see it. “Story of my life, lady. Un-life. Undeath? Whatever the hell stage I’m in now.”

    “I think you come from outside the bubble, yes?”

    “Yeah.”

    Paloma _hmmed_ thoughtfully. “Sit down, and we will talk. That is how this usually goes.”

    Lup floated over to the table and chairs, then considered the chair. “I don’t think I can sit in anything. I’m just gonna go right through.”

    “That does throw a wrench in it,” Paloma said. “You stand, then.” She busied herself fetching a tray of scones out of the oven while Lup floated, probably menacingly, next to the table. Lup made a resolution to not only try her damndest to get her body back in some way, but come back to Paloma’s as soon as she did. The smell was driving her nuts with jealousy.

    “So what is your name?” Paloma asked. “And while we are on the subject, why did you come to me?”

    “My name’s Lup.” At least she knew her name wouldn’t be staticked out, but Lup still braced herself. Paloma only nodded. “I guess I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

    “Oh, that’s nice of you. Nobody from town really comes to see me. I go to them sometimes to get ingredients, but it’s not very fun.”

    “Boy, do I get that,” Lup muttered.

    “Oh?”

    “It’s a long story. I was stuck in...a place for a long time. It wasn’t fun.”

    “Well, now you can go and be somewhere else for a long time instead, yes?” Paloma stacked up the scones neatly on a plate. Lup scoffed.

    “Sure, except I don’t have a whole lot of time until time gets reset.”

    “Until time gets - what are you talking about?”

    “Listen, I’d totally explain, but I literally can’t,” Lup said. “Like, literally. No, you know what, here we go. A Grand Relic is fucking this town the hell up.”

    “A what?” Paloma asked. “That was very strange. You were talking, and then your voice was just - psshhh, it was noise.”

    “Yeah, that’s what’s stopping me. Hand on my heart, I’d explain all sorts of shit because you’re literally the first person I’ve talked to in like, _years._ ”

    “You are a very strange undead lady,” Paloma observed. “Years is not a good amount of time to go without talking to people.”

    “Believe me, it wasn’t my choice.”

    “Well, how much time do you have before you say time will be reset or whatever?”

    Lup thought about it. “How long until noon?”

    Paloma looked up at a clock on the wall.“About thirty-five minutes.”

    “Then I’ve got thirty-five minutes.”

    “So,” Paloma said, “use it! Half an hour is a good amount of time. You can talk a lot in half an hour. What would you like to talk about?”

    “I don’t know,” Lup said, taken aback. “There’s a lot I _can’t_ talk about.”

    “Like you can’t talk about whatever is fucking this town the hell up?”

    Lup cracked a smile. “Yeah. Like that.”

    “We will think of something,” Paloma said confidently. “Tell me about where you come from.”

 

    Talking with Paloma was one of the most soothing things Lup had ever done. Maybe Paloma was just good at exuding calming old lady vibes, or maybe it was just having someone _acknowledge_ her presence finally. It was informative, too; Lup got through most of her abridged backstory, avoiding naming Taako has her brother, without Paloma once telling her that she’d staticked out or showing any sign that she hadn’t heard part of it. Lup could guess, based on that, how much Taako remembered.

    Even if he didn’t remember her, he still knew where he’d come from. She wondered if he’d ever noticed that there wasn’t a New Elfington in this world.

    ...Shit, maybe there _was_ and _she’d_ never noticed.

 

    Back in the umbrella, watching Taako and the other two repeat their same actions over again, Lup thought maybe she wouldn’t mind the umbrastaff getting exploded again.

    As long as nobody died when it did.

    So of course, in the mines below, the three of them immediately died without the umbrastaff being harmed in any way.

    Lup really, really didn’t need to have her only view be of her friends’ skeletons for a straight forty minutes.

 

    Somebody, or maybe just the Chalice, really hated Lup, because there were _three more_ stupid explosions where all she could do was float through eighty feet of rock or whatever, or sit in a tiny-ass room with her friends’ corpses and wait to be trapped again.

    Lup wished Barry was here. It would give her someone to talk to, if not at least someone with the knowledge to temporarily revive one of the three.

    She wondered if he was still trying to find her.

   

    ... _Four_ more explosions and deaths.

    At least the last one reset pretty fast.

 

    Lup was intrigued by Luca. He didn’t seem like a lich, and he certainly wasn’t floating around in a dramatic robe, but he was also inarguably very dead. He hadn’t tried on purpose to be dead or a skeleton, though, which Lup felt disqualified him in some way.

    It was a shame he got crushed by rocks and all, but he would be fine. Maybe they could be dead buddies when she came back to have a taste of what Paloma had going on.

 

    “Taako, _noo,”_ Lup groaned as the trio agreed to a _bank robbery_ deal in order to raise the temple. “You are such a mess without me! Just wait until the loop resets and try and persuade him again!”

    At least Taako had the sense to try and persuade Redmond out of using the bomb. Lup may not have seen the bank every time, but she was pretty sure that a _bunch_ of people ended up dead when the bomb plan was used. That was a definite no-no.

 

    Of course in the middle of a fight Taako took the time to _actually_ rob the bank.

    “Gems are not worth this!” Lup yelled. “Just ask for some diamonds _after_ you save the town! They’ll totally pay you! _You’re a persuasive person don’t be a jerk!”_ He wasn’t even going to be able to keep those past the next reset.

    “Taako, what the fuck!” Magnus yelled from the lobby.

    “Hey, listen guys, trust me for once,” Taako said, stuffing diamonds into his backpack.

    “You’re being stupid and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Magnus is showing a lot more common sense than you are!” Lup kicked the wall. The curtain, as usual, temporarily pretended to not be a curtain and stayed as stiff as stone.

    Taako grabbed the journal and, calmer than he had any right to be, strolled out of the vault.

    “My name is Taako, and you work for me now.”

    “Shit,” Lup said, recognizing the spell he cast just after saying that. “You’re getting into some deep shit, Taako.”

    She did _not_ like the clay. The clay was terrible and covered her whole range of vision, burying her as it climbed up past Taako’s waist. It wouldn’t kill _her,_ but what about Magnus, what about Merle? Had it reached Taako’s head? Gone _past_ his head? Was he struggling to breathe-

    The clay retracted and vanished, pulling back into the familiar shape of Roswell.

    “What would you like me to do?”

 

    Lup didn’t like the temple of Istus.

    Sure, it was pretty rad, getting it to rebuild itself like that, but Istus was a _goddess._ Anything that came from the celestial plane tended to look unkindly on undead, unless they were evil gods. And those tended to no longer be allowed into the celestial plane. Not that Lup wanted to associate herself with them, anyway.

    “I want a dope gift,” Lup said sulkily as Taako took the bag of necessity. There was no way Istus didn’t notice her there. “This is prejudiced against liches.” She was absolutely going to be there when that bag opened, umbrastaff prison or no. They were twins, legally Taako probably had to share whatever was inside it. He’d probably whine about it, too, like the hoarder he was. Lup could hear it already.

 

    Lup was not _entirely_ sure what happened after Taako broke the bubble holding June and the cup, but a whole lot was happening at once and the aftermath seemed kind of anticlimactic.

    Magnus leaned down and picked up his chalice, and said heatedly, “I told you we’ve dealt with this before, asshole.”

    Lup thought she probably could have done better with the whole one-liner shtick, but whatever. Magnus’s cup, Magnus’s game. Wasn’t like he would, or could, listen to her.

 

    The not-fighting-the-purple-worm thing went _fantastically,_ in Lup’s opinion, and Magnus immediately redeemed himself from the average one-liner with his dope cart stunt escape. However, Lup forgot about literally all of that as soon as Barry appeared.

    “You didn’t use the cup?” Barry asked blankly, which Lup could hear even through his stupid affected voice.

    “Nope, we all three said no, right?” Magnus didn’t sound like he knew or cared at all what a feat that was.

    “Yeah, we didn’t use it.” Taako chimed in.

    “I’m really proud of you. I thought there was a chance that maybe this would be the one to end your adventure.”

    “Aw, hell no,” Lup said. “Taako’s related to me, was there even a chance? They’ve got backup in each other! You gotta stop underestimating people, babe. We were a team right outta school.”

    “You’re proud of - wait, hold on, you’re a red robe, right? You’re one of the bad guys.” Magnus sounded bewildered. Lup winced.

    “Who told you that?”

    _“Everybody,”_ Merle and Taako said simultaneously.

    “You’re fucking liars, you’ve never heard about us from anybody except Lucretia,” Lup shouted over the other comments, suddenly worried. She was alone, but she knew Barry was out there and she could accompany Taako. _Barry_ \- Barry really _was_ alone.

    “I need to know,” Barry said, “Do you trust me?”

    Lup’s heart sank under the weight of a chorus of ‘no’s.

    “Barry - babe, you can’t-” _Please_ let there have been more than those three tying Barry down. Please, please, please. The way he was shuddering and sparking didn’t look promising. “Cut that shit out! I’m still on your side, and I just pulled this same stuff earlier, so stop copying me! We can’t both of us break down at the same time! Barry, please!” Lup pounded at the walls. Why couldn’t he have found her earlier? Surely he could’ve found some way through the bubble, maybe. They could have talked, finally! Outside, Barry fell to his knees. “No! C’mon! I’m right here!”

    “Lup, they don’t trust me,” Barry said, in his normal voice, and Lup’s breath caught. “I can’t do it anymore, Lup, I’m sorry.”

    “Barry, no!”

    But Barry didn’t lose control or explode or do anything other than get back to his feet. Lup watched, frozen, as he spoke in his strange, hissing voice again.

    “The next time we meet, I will need you to trust me completely and absolutely. Otherwise, all of this will have been for nothing. The Hunger is almost here. And when it arrives, this world will be lost.”

    And _then_ he vanished.

    “Come back,” Lup whispered. Nobody heard.

 

    Kravitz showing up as soon as Taako got back home was a dick move. Lup didn’t like him. Figuring out that Taako had _willingly agreed to meet him again_ was _more_ of a dick move, because it was coming from Taako.

    And then Taako picked a couple’s night place to meet him at.

    This was too good _not_ to eavesdrop the hell out of.

    “-the fact that I’ve visited you as much as I have means this line of work is preposterously dangerous,” Kravitz was saying. Lup stuck her tongue out at him. “So why are you doing this, Taako? Why aren’t you doing a, uh, a safer career?”

    “Because I’m worried no one else will have me.”

    “Oh, Taako,” Lup sighed, ignoring Kravitz’s response. “I’ve got your back, don’t worry.” Like being trapped in an umbrella was going to stop her. It actually made it more convenient, in a way, since Taako always carried her around with him. It went a little towards balancing out the unpleasant side effect of being imprisoned with no way to make her voice or presence known.

    The rest of the outing was just plain boring, once they got past the Refuge talk. The Refuge talk wasn’t fun either, because it reminded Lup of all those deaths and the fucking scones that she never got to eat. Taako did make a pretty dope vase, though. It was a little too tasteful for Lup’s, ha, tastes, but it was okay.

    Lup had stayed relatively quiet and still, but when Taako started rambling about Kravitz, Lup surged up, giggling. She was going to remember this _forever._

    Maybe she got too excited, because Kravitz immediately went all reaper-y and started asking about dark spirits.

    “I eat old dead dudes with my umbrella,” Taako said, “is that a possibility, maybe?”

    “Fuck you, Taako! I’m going to remember this next time you need me to bail you out of jail or something!” Lup seethed. She kept as still as she could, trying to stay unobtrusive while still keeping an eye on Kravitz. As soon as he turned around, she threw her weight into moving the umbrastaff. “Sorry, bro, but I’m not dying for your hookup!”

    In hindsight, she should’ve tried a little harder to keep control, because Taako jerked her up and away from Kravitz, and her spell went soaring into the sky instead.

    “What was that?” Lup saw Kravitz spin around.

    “The umbrastaff’s trying to kill you, man!”

    Lup cursed violently and cut off her senses as Taako handed her over to Kravitz. She huddled into a corner of the black-curtained room - maybe it wouldn’t help, but it couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like anybody could see her like this.

    No scythe blade came piercing through the room, much less through the umbrastaff. Eventually, Lup allowed herself to think that the danger had passed.

    She was going to have to think of something _good_ to get Taako back for that one.

 

    Lup didn’t like the sound of what Lucretia was saying about this ‘Wonderland’ place.

    Then she got to listen to Lucretia lie more about their tight-knit crew, and she liked the situation less.

    And _then_ Taako just tossed her to Magnus like he didn’t even care what happened to her! Snippily, Lup jerked herself out of Magnus’s grip and floated down to the ground next to where Taako had landed.    

Jerk. She’d still prefer him to Magnus.

 

Barry appeared on the path outside the Wonderland building, floating out of the trees and into the group of adventurers.

Lup gave a shout of surprise, but no one else reacted to his presence, not even Taako or Merle or Magnus. He must have come invisibly, and he hovered quietly, following behind the three of them.

    “Barry, I swear,” Lup said. “You have nothing better to do than notice me. I’m right here! _Hello!”_ As usual, her voice didn’t make it past the confines of her prison. Cursing, Lup stared outside sullenly.

    He was going to get a real talking-to as soon as she made it out.

 

    As soon as Lup saw the other liches, she went still and quiet.

    Taako was living it up, which meant there was some kind of illusion magic going on. She could hear the music and see the lights, but the liches stayed liches in tattered black robes. Taako was definitely not into that; he’d made fun of her and Barry far too much to have changed his mind now.

    The wheel of sacrifice, Lup could see perfectly.

    “Get out now,” Lup said. “Taako, _now._ I mean it, this place is bad bad news, don’t you dare touch that wheel.”

    Taako touched the wheel to spin it, and landed on skull.

    “God _damnit.”_

 

    The funny thing was, Lup just barely avoided being crushed under the machinery _with_ Taako.

    It wasn’t really that funny when she could hear the breath leaving Taako’s lungs in an agonized gasp. Rarely was Lup reduced to clawing at the walls in a frantic escape attempt, but boy if one of those rare times wasn’t now.

    “I’m going to _kill_ them, she growled, yanking as hard as she could on the curtains. Flames licked up high enough to touch her face, but she didn’t care. “I am going to beat the fucking _shit_ out of those liches and I’m going to make each of them watch it happen to the other!”

    Taako gasped out a spell, and vanished into the ethereal plane.

    The other funny thing was that he took Lup with him, technically. Well, not technically, she was very much there. And so she could also see the Hunger’s scouts _lining the walls._

“Oh, shit,” Lup said. “It’s been a year.” There were far, far too many of them for an attack to be anything more than imminent. “Oh, shit!” What could she do? She’d spent over a year failing to get out, much less get Taako to take a damn hint! Where was Barry when she needed him? It was his artifact! If it ended up killing Taako or Magnus or Merle, she’d - she’d-

    Well, it wasn’t Barry’s fault. But she was definitely going to make him bring them back in some fashion or another to make up for it being his artifact’s fault.

 

    Taako lost ‘vitality’, which didn’t seem like anything good, Magnus lost ten years, and Barry was ignoring her in order to trace mysterious symbols into Magnus’s hand.

    “Are you kidding?” Lup howled. “You can show up to do spooky shit but you can’t try and figure out that I’m right here?”

    Barry didn’t so much as turn his head towards her. He was very, very focused on whatever he was doing with Magnus. Magnus himself was making a valiant effort to keep his expression blank.

    It occurred to Lup that she had been so thoroughly absorbed by the umbrastaff that she couldn’t be told apart from its normal magics. Maybe _nobody_ would notice her, ever.

    She forced herself to drop that idea in the next minute. Fucking _Kravitz_ had noticed her, Barry could manage it if he would just _pay attention._

    Suffice to say, Barry did not pay attention.

 

    Barry kept not paying attention to her. Lup could _see him,_ lurking behind Magnus. The whole situation was fucked up - she didn’t even want to touch the weird crowd of mannequins and the two liches running Wonderland - but Barry didn’t need to go and make it _worse._

    And ew, he also didn’t need to go and steal the necrotic energy that the Wonderland liches were feeding off of. That seemed unsanitary. What had he done to reduce himself to stealing emotions like that? Had it been the refusal of trust from the boys?

    Lup worried, and not just about Barry. Taako was still barely standing, the Hunger was coming, and worst of all, she’d been paying such close attention over the last few months that the remaining energy from the arcane shards was getting used up. It was becoming, slowly, harder and harder to see and hear _everything._

    Great fucking timing, umbrastaff.

 

    Lup missed a lot of stuff, probably. Without keeping an eye on the physical world outside of the umbrastaff, it was difficult to tell exactly how much time was passing. But there was a definite disconnect between the weird as hell penalty-less dating game and facing off with _Jenkins_ again next to a pile of weirdly detailed marionettes.

    Meanwhile _Barry_ was in the back of the room fucking conjuring up dressers and lamps out of the weird necrotic fog that the two resident liches seemed to use for everything. Lup was beginning to think that being a lich _had_ made him lose his mind a little.

    The only benefit to the whole endeavor was that fake Jenkins had, like the real one, a fake wand to drop. Lup inverted the umbrella canopy with a surge of movement, absorbing it as fast as she could. It wasn’t a real wand, just a foggy copy and full of necrotic energy that burned like alcohol and turned the curtains blacker. Alertness surged through Lup like she’d been electrified.

    She could deal with this method of sustaining herself. Wasn’t her preference, though.

    And then Taako turned into a fucking dinosaur, and no matter how clearly she could see, things got a little scrambled.

    They all very definitely escaped through Barry’s hastily-conjured door, once he finally got done with portraits and fireplaces and whatnot. The ominous, dark room full of cylindrical prison-like things did not improve Lup’s opinion of the clusterfuck they were all in. Technically she was the only one safe from it, and she _still_ didn’t like it.

    And the liches were still dicks! Lup didn’t care _how_ sad their backstory was, they’d been tormenting her friends for far too long! Any time at all was too long, in her opinion.

    And they’d been using the Animus Bell to do it.

    Lup couldn’t see Barry’s face - he didn’t exactly have one in lich form - but she could tell he wasn’t happy.

    Lup threw herself against the walls with a scream as Magnus’s soul was punched out of his body. She could see Barry jerk towards him automatically, and then still himself.

    “Why are you _stopping?”_ Lup yelled. “You’re not trapped! Help him!” But Barry was hesitating, looking back towards the other liches. _“Barry!”_

    Barry evidently thought it was more important to get into a fog-manipulating fight with the other liches. Who, Lup noticed, could _see_ him now. “Don’t be an idiot and give up your cover!” Lup shouted at him furiously. “If they kill you I’m never gonna forgive you!”

    She never thought she’d regret how liches couldn’t heal, but the sight of Merle lying on the floor for so long rattled her more than she’d ever like to admit. Magnus and Taako were too busy fighting the liches to do anything - hell, Magnus was too busy fighting _himself._ That sight was definitely not helping the whole Lup-feeling-bad thing.

    Lup _howled_ when the force of one of the lich’s strike sent Taako collapsing to the ground. The black curtains looked ethereal and strange from the wild shadows she was casting, red electricity flickering around her hands as she did her absolute best to tear the _stupid_ curtains down.

    She almost missed the other lich getting tossed out of Magnus’s body. She jerked around, pointing with a hungry intensity towards where he was hovering.

    “Ohhh, yes,” Lup hissed, as the fabric canopy inverted and sucked the lich in. The black-robed spirit fell out of the indeterminable ceiling and collapsed onto the ground.

    He was quick on the uptake; he scrambled to his hands and knees, staring up at her in fear. “Who - who are you? What is this place?”

    “Are you the one that’s been hurting my brother out there?” Lup demanded. The answer was irrelevant - they’d both harmed Taako - but she wanted to know who was responsible for the machinery stunt.

    “Am I - where are we?”

    Lup grit her teeth. The evasion was enough of an answer for her. “I’m going to _fucking kill you now.”_

    The lich didn’t get a chance to respond before she picked him up by the scruff and tossed him into a wall.

    He fought back, but however old this lich was, he was struggling the way she’d struggled when she’d first been absorbed. He didn’t have her experience, and he _definitely_ didn’t have her skill. Lup took a vicious pleasure in the way he wailed and tried desperately to beat out the flames that had begun to spark on his own robe.

    With a vicious shove, Lup threw him as far as she could. She rattled viciously, handle clattering on the floor, and the fabric canopy inverted again.

    The other lich vanished through the curtained wall.

    _“Are you kidding me?”_ Lup screamed. She dove for the place where he’d vanished. There were only curtains, endlessly. _“No!”_ Why _him?_ Why the hell did he get to escape and not her?

    The umbrastaff rattled again, but not because of her. The other lich, with a deafening scream of grief, sparked and shook and disintegrated into ash.

    And so did Magnus’s body.

 

    It was _infuriating,_ having the group travel with Barry through the wilderness for a whole day and night and have him _never_ take notice of her. Lup fumed - quietly. The fight with the Wonderland lich had taken a surprising amount out of her. She could watch, but she couldn’t do much else.

    At least she was _with_ them. As the trio followed Barry deeper into what was evidently his hideout, Lup peered around at everything. The main area looked a lot like Barry’s room on the Starblaster had, with books everywhere and candles burning. The only difference was the big map of Faerûn with all sorts of photos and string tacked to it.

    Oh, and the ominous green glowing tube with a body in it. That was definitely new, and also super weird.

    As Taako turned, Lup caught a glimpse of Barry’s robe draped over a small wooden chest.

    “Aw, dunk, you looted yourself, didn’t you?” Lup sighed, the urge to laugh bubbling up inside her chest and dispelling some of her bad mood. “That’s gotta be awkward. I wish I’d been able to save mine.” More than a hundred years without anything worse than a stain, and now it was nothing more than dust on a cave floor. She’d have to get somebody to whip her up a new one.

    It was only when Barry stopped talking that Lup realized that he had been and started paying attention to him again. He was floating halfway through the tank, the green liquid inside making his lich form look strange. Lup caught only the last glimpse of his hood as he vanished completely within the opaque stuff.

    “Uh,” Lup said, “babe?” Merle was in the corner investigating the chest, but she was watching the pod. What was Barry doing?

    The casing of the pod split and tore open, spilling out the liquid and sending the body inside stumbling to the ground. Lup gasped so loudly it was amazing nobody heard her.

    Barry blinked, coughing and wiping greenish goo remnants off of his face. He squinted around at the three other people in the cave, a befuddled expression on his face.

    “Oh, _fuck_ yes,” said Lup, buoyed on sudden ecstatic hope. Barry had his _body_ back. If she could just get out of the fucking umbrella- “Way to make an entrance!”

 

    The coin Barry has recorded was a neat magical trick. Barry in the here and now, still squinting without his glasses and shirtless, was staring at it half in awe and half in confusion.

    “And right now,” the coin was saying, “in this moment, you feel a dull weight in your chest. It’s the weight of a love that defined and redeemed you but you’ve forgotten who that weight belongs to.”

    “Oh, babe, that’s just being a hopeless romantic,” Lup said, not meaning a single bit of her criticism. She felt calmer than she had in ages. She was surer now, too. The message had done more for her than any wand from a defeated foe ever had.

    This was the message Barry had heard every time he’d regrown a body for himself, however many times that had been. Barry in his body was looking at the coin in wonder, now, wonder laid over something small and vulnerable that made Lup’s nonexistent heart melt.

    “I’m right here,” she said softly. “You can figure it out, Barry. C’mon. For me.”

 

    As soon as Taako put on the Band of Telepathic Thought, which Lup had _completely_ forgotten about along with him, an idea leaped into Lup’s head.

    The umbrastaff couldn’t talk, so neither could she to anyone else, but _telepathy-_

    “Trust Barry!” She said, and Taako startled. Her heart swelled. It worked! “Love Barry!” She repeated that a couple times, just to drill it into his head - god knew Taako was terrible at remembering things. Even if this was a special case. “Taako, it’s - it’s me!” Would it work, this time? “It’s your sister! It’s me! Trust Barry!” Damnit, she should have used her name. She knew Lucretia hadn’t taken that from her. But Taako, looking uncertain, took off the circlet, and she was cut off. “Damn.”

    Lup was still filled with hope and excitement. Taako would put it back on eventually, and then he could hear her. She only had to think of the right thing to say.

 

    She couldn’t think of a single goddamn thing to say that she hadn’t already said.

    Lup’s mind was full of the fading color of the world, the way the Hunger was slowly and steadily beginning to leech what it could from their home. Lup had to tear herself away from what was essentially a threat and make herself calm down. _Remember the good day,_ she told herself. _Remember Barry’s message._

    If she could be still, if she could save up her energy for one opportune moment, then maybe - just maybe - she could put out a sign strong enough for somebody to notice.

    It had to work.

 

    She saved up and saved up and saved up, and then the umbrastaff went clattering out of Taako’s hands.

    “Shit!” Lup said reflexively, and then looked outside. “Whoa, _shit!_ Okay, okay - Taako, pick me up!” But Taako wasn’t wearing the Band of Telepathic Thought anymore. “Shit!”

    Smaller hands scooped her up.

    “Is this okay, sir?”

    “Fuck, fine, go for it!”

    Lup unleashed her spell in one final, desperate act.

 

    Lup could feel Angus’s hands trembling.

    “I - that wasn’t me! I didn’t cast that, sir! I’m not powerful enough!”

    “I know.” Taako’s voice was low, and measured.

    “No, you don’t understand!”

    The umbrastaff went sailing through the air.

    “Come on,” Lup said. “Come on, come on, come on, come on-”

    The umbrastaff snapped over Taako’s knee and her prison splintered into pieces and she was _out._

**Author's Note:**

> trapped Lup: Fuck YOU for not noticing I'm here, and fuck YOU, and YOU, oh and fuck YOU
> 
> Lup, the exact moment she gets freed: you're all wonderful people who have never done anything wrong, ever, in your entire lives. i love you all. grudge? who's she?
> 
> (though now I kind of want to write another story about what might have happened if Barry had realized she was there when he noticed the staff in Crystal Kingdom, and just grabbed it and ran...)


End file.
